TANKS FOR EVERYTHING, PART I
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, Monday, October 06, 2008

Ideally we should like to be heading out to The Marquesas at this very moment. But, two things give us pause. First, we are waiting to hear if Canadian friends are going to fly down and travel overland with us to Peru and Bolivia, and second, our fuel tanks are rusting and corroded inside, which causes our fuel filters to clog up at a rapid rate. At $50 per change-of-filters, that can add up. Not to mention that if you don’t change the filters frequently the engine is starved of fuel and loses power. In other words, this is important and we have begun to replace both steel tanks.

Viewed correctly, this should be an interesting way of getting to know another side of Ecuador. And it is. The downside is that at present I have a case of estomacho turistico, which works rather to exhaust and depress me and to take the fun out of bouncing around on bad country roads in the mechanic’s hard-sprung truck.

Getting the first fuel tank out has been a daylong, messy job, which fortunately the mechanic and his helper did as there is no way I could have handled it. The job is part conceptual thinking, part handiness with tools and mostly grunt-work. We simultaneously pull our ancient and rusting propane galley stove to get at the tank mounts. Renovating this old stove with new gas-innards and a paint job has been on our list of improvements for some time. It should cost under $100 while a new galley stove – admittedly a spiffy, stainless-steel cooker from West Marine - costs over $1,200. Under advice, we have abandoned our idea of trashing the old cooker and installing a concinetta, a table-top propane stove, the propane gas guy said that, since the tubing etc. are of very poor metal, the stovetop is not likely to stand up to the marine environment.

With all this work going on, the cabin is currently dirty and messy, we can’t make coffee in the morning and, at present, since our batteries had already been run down and ruined while we were gone for six months, we don’t even have electric lights. This can be depressing at times. Add in the stomach bug, which has now claimed Kathleen as well, and coffee withdrawal symptoms (headaches and lassitude) and you can perhaps understand.

Looking on the bright side however, we have really competent local guys to help us at a price which we could never have afforded in Canada or the U.S.A. Some ex-pats have told me that I overpay the mechanic at $8/hr; in Long Beach a couple of years ago, though, we paid $85/hour! “Wacho”, the mechanic, is in general control of the process of tank replacement. I actually only pay him the hourly wage for the direct work he does on or for the boat. He pays his helpers out of that. He just throws in the running around for free and drags me along to pay for the supplies, put gas in his truck, generally keep him company and to get to know the locals. This is fun. He lines up good craftsmen and workers and saves me a lot of time, wasted energy and frustration having to go up the local learning curve on my own. That has to be worth something.

A good example is our fuel tanks project. The whole issue of new tanks is fraught because one cruising boat, S/V Nine of Cups” had a terrible experience with a firm in Manta. The welding was bad and despite claims to the contrary the tank had never been pressure-tested. There were over thirty leaks; some of the holes actually whistled when put under pressure! Wacho, however, swears by “Amigo Felix”, a local welder, and I have a lot of confidence in Wacho. So, once inspection of our cut-open, old tank led to the conclusion that it’s would not be practicable to renovate it, we three drove on Saturday in Wacho’s truck to Manta. Wacho’s son, George (15, a high-school pupil) and Wacho’s helper, Mario (21, and a father of two kids aged 4 and 2!) were along in the open back to help with the lifting and grunt work.

Steel stockist & welding shop

First, we visit a steel stockist to select two sheets of 3mm rolled steel plate. At $107.40 & 12% sales tax, these were a little cheaper than anticipated. Loading up, we then move on to a nearby metalworking shop where they have big bending presses that can put the right crimps into the sheets. Because they know Felix and Wacho, they agree to interrupt their current work to cut the sheet for us in the right size using a hand-torch. We then moved to the hydraulic bending presses to put the straight-line crimps in the steel plates. These presses give clean bend-lines, which in turn cuts down on the amount of welding needed at the next stage. (I add this information since, if you are like me, you have never seen a steel tank made). Our one still-unused plate of steel (for the second tank when it comes to be made) plus the now cut and crimped pieces for the first tank are all placed in the back of the truck along with some steel bar that Amigo Felix needs for another project back home.

Machining & parts

All the shops and workshops you need are near the bus station in Manta. It’s a real beehive of industry, but all at a very small scale. It also pays to go there with a guide like Wacho and/or Felix. Not only do they know where the good ones are, you get to chat with the owners and craftsmen while they are working on your items. Everywhere I look lining the streets, there is a welder or a bicycle repairman, a carpenter or a car mechanic, a car parts outlet or some other specialty retailer for some trade (welding supplies; fasteners; electricals; electronics; paints/coatings; etc.; etc.; etc.). If necessary, a craftsmen darts around the corner to get a part or bring in another specialist. The two independents are used to working with each other and they settle up later by trading services or in cash. Our machinist needs some small welding done, for example. His neighbour, in this case his cousin or brother-in-law, brings his flame from around the corner and does the job in about one minute. Their badly-lit workshops (not infrequently with jury-rigged wire attachments to the overhead power lines!) are basically store fronts about the size of a small or medium garage. During the day they do at least half of their work in the street. At night around 1830 they pull the steel shutter down when they leave. Maybe they even live upstairs in cramped apartments over the workshop with their wives and children. You almost never see a woman in this district except that she peeps out through the curtains from her upstairs purdah.

There are of course some bigger and more professionally-run workshops, such as the bending shop we visited earlier that works on trucks and heavy equipment, or “El Bruho”, a big machine shop doing most of its work for the Manta fishing fleet. But a large part of “industrial Manta” is comprised of these little one or two-man efforts, with craftsmen who probably have no paper certification; Wacho actually has proper journeyman’s papers as a mechanic, but he like these men also grew up working in father’s business from the age of nine or ten. And, as in all poor countries (I don’t really like the term “Third World countries” as it feels rather patronising) where money is scant and materials are hard to come, these guys can turn sow’s ears into silk purses. They understand flexibility, creativeness and customer satisfaction. Absent any meaningful paper qualifications (we use them in industrialised countries to have portable and recognisable reliability both for employers and customers), you need either personal local knowledge of the local scene so you will know which craftsman is good, honest and reliable. Or, you need a guide. In my opinion, that is frequently Wacho’s biggest contribution to our projects besides of course the direct work he does on Vilisar. And, because he himself is skilled, honest and reliable, he tends to want to work with others of this kind. As we used to say in banking, “First-class managers hire first-class subordinates; second-class managers hire third-class subordinates”.

We also visit nearby “El Amigo”, a specialty hardware and parts store that specialises in O-rings (to confuse students of the language, they are called “orringes” in Spanish!); we need four, diesel fuel-tolerant gasket rings for the ¼-inch steel ‘cookies’ of about 4 or 5-inches in diameter that we had picked up off the scrap heap back at the steel stockists. With these, the O-rings and stainless-steel screws (also from “El Amigo”), we head just around the corner to one of the small machine shops consisting of three lathes and two drill presses.
While we watch and wait, the lad turns the ugly steel ‘cookies’ into shiny caps and backing rings. These are destined to become inspection ports, the steel ring to be welded to the inside of the tank, the flat piece being the outer cover and all to be held in place with the screws and bolts and made leak-proof with the O-ring gaskets. Down the road this will allow us to inspect and clean the bottom of the tanks periodically.

Leaving town with all our errands completed, we stop along the way for the five of us to eat lunch. My stomach has been acting up badly for the last few days and I am on some medication. So I stick to chicken soup. The four guys, however, pile into the almuerzos (set lunch) with a will and even ask for extra rice (the main staple here in Ecuador, not potatoes). Man! Those plates were clean! Any mother would have been proud.

By 1600, two hours later, we are back in Bahía, unloading the steel and agreeing next steps with Amigo Felix. He says he would be starting to work on Sunday afternoon following church (he is a born-again Christian, and elder, I think, at Iglésia Jesús la Roca; he never misses Sunday services and meets for prayer and Bible study during the week). If you have a small shop or workshop, and especially if it is family-owned, you work seven days a week to make ends meet. A business in Ecuador has to be fairly big for there to be regulated hours, and weekends (Saturday afternoon and Sunday) and medical benefits, etc. Or, likely, to pay taxes, as well. We’re talking the cash economy here.

When I drop in on Felix on Sunday afternoon, he is already at work and has the main body of the tank “basted” together with welds and is getting ready to put in the baffles, place the plumbing (i.e., taps, pipes and hoses) and inspection port and then to weld on the top. I decide not to distract him; give the guy a chance to present a good finished product. We have already agreed that Wacho and I will be present at the pressure testing (80 psi for 24 hours, I think Wacho said).

Some boat problems are just a colossal pain in the derriere. But, looked at correctly, it is a chance to learn more about the boat and about the country.